Red Sox return home for Boston revival

Saturday

Apr 20, 2013 at 7:11 PM

BOSTON — It wasn’t just a baseball game at Fenway Park on Saturday.

By TIM BRITTON

BOSTON — It wasn’t just a baseball game at Fenway Park on Saturday.

No, this was a revival, with 35,152 fans cathartically testifying to the strength and unity of a city inured by a trip to hell and back in a week. Five days after the marathon bombing, fewer than 24 hours after the second suspect was apprehended, Fenway Park celebrated its 101st birthday with a day unlike any in its history.

It had been only those five days since the Red Sox had last played a game at Fenway, but their Monday win over the Rays belongs to a different era in Boston history. The team returned home on Saturday to a ballpark and a city that was familiar but not quite the same.

Fenway’s day began with a sweep for explosives, the third sweep since it was last open to fans. With the flag still at half-mast, the security was amplified all day, complete with magnetic wands at the entrances and bomb-sniffing dogs making their rounds. A 1:10 start was pushed to 1:35 to accommodate a pregame ceremony that honored victims, volunteers and law enforcement. It included a montage of images from Monday morning through to the tense hours late Friday night, all set to Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah.”

The Red Sox wore white jerseys with their city name across the chest, and the Royals had the Boston B on their jersey in the form of a Boston Strong patch. The loudest ovations were for the men in navy-blue police uniforms.

And “Dirty Water” was played before the game, as the Sox took the field. Because on Saturday, it wasn’t about whether they won or lost. It was that the Red Sox played the game.

“I truly don’t think a win-loss is what we’re looking for today,” Jonny Gomes said before the Red Sox went out and won anyway, 4-3. “I think just the fact of us taking the field, filling the seats with people.”

“Win, lose or draw today, it’s one of those things people understand it’s a happy time, it’s a day for us to celebrate,” said Shane Victorino, in the same breath acknowledging the city’s recent losses. “Today, we take the field and you think about the heartache and the pain and the sadness of what happened.”

“That was important for this city, to see the team back, to see Fenway Park filled,” reliever and Connecticut native Craig Breslow said. “It was a day that everybody could feel good about.”

Weeks like this make the place sports hold in our lives seem exaggerated. The failure to get a guy in from third with one out, the courage to throw a 3-2 breaking ball, the heroics of a big home run — those nouns don’t feel quite as legitimate.

But days such as Saturday can reaffirm that the games do mean something. At their least, they can be a salutary distraction — three hours spent concentrating on the more trivial. At their best, they can aid the healing process, with 35,000-plus coming together as one voice, the stands at Fenway alive with chants and songs all Saturday long.

They chanted “U-S-A!” and “Let’s Go Boston,” along with the more regular “Let’s Go Red Sox.” They sang the national anthem, they sang “God Bless America” and they sang “Sweet Caroline” along with Neil Diamond himself, who decided himself to fly to Boston on Saturday morning.

“We can’t replace or take away the events that have happened, but at the same time [we can] show that strength in our uniform here today,” manager John Farrell said. “Everyone takes pride in being a part of Boston.”

“We know how big a deal baseball is here. We know how passionate everyone is about it,” said Will Middlebrooks. “We’re just happy to get back out there and help the city heal.”

It was indeed a celebration on Saturday, of what the Red Sox mean to the city and what the city means to its people.

“There isn’t a single challenge that we face that can’t be surmounted by a renewed sense of community,” Governor Patrick said. “That really came through, this notion that we have a stake in each other. Everybody stepped up.”

“This city has come together at a time where we were at our weakest,” catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia said. “It just proves how relentless this city is, and how relentless this nation is.”

“Nothing can bring us down,” Middlebrooks added.

The pregame ceremony left players with tears in their eyes — “I’m glad I had glasses on,” said Daniel Nava, emotionally drained.

“What I did feel today,” said Gomes, “I’ve never felt before.”

Maybe the hope is that such emotion can be reciprocated, that the team’s come-from-behind win on Saturday can provide, in some small way, the same kind of lift to its city.

“You get people in a good mood, even the people that have been affected,” David Ortiz said. “You give them some hope. We let them know we were here for them.”

“Today is a day that really put it in perspective that Boston Strong is something that’s not just a slogan,” Nava said.

And, at the end of the pregame ceremony, there was Ortiz — the team’s longest-tenured player, the one who said this week how angry and emotional he became watching the news unfold in the city he calls home — punctuating it in a style simultaneously his own and of Boston.